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Destination Gobi

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Destination Gobi
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRobert Wise
Screenplay byEverett Freeman
Based onNinety Saddles for Kengtu
1952 Collier's
by Edmund G. Love
Produced byStanley Rubin
StarringRichard Widmark
Don Taylor
Casey Adams
Murvyn Vye
Narrated byRichard Widmark
CinematographyCharles G. Clarke
Edited byRobert Fritch
Music bySol Kaplan
Production
company
20th Century Fox
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • March 20, 1953 (1953-03-20)
Running time
90 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1,340,000[1]
Box office$1.2 million (US rentals)[2]

Destination Gobi is a 1953 American Technicolor World War II film released by 20th Century-Fox. It was produced by Stanley Rubin, directed by Robert Wise (his first color feature film), and stars Richard Widmark and Don Taylor.

The film is about the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), referred to as Sino-American Combined Operations in the film.[3]

Actor Ernest Borgnine has stated in interviews that he believed that this film, and Widmark's role of CPO Sam McHale, were the basis of the role of Quentin McHale in Borgnine's 1960's television show McHale's Navy.[4]

Plot

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The film's foreword reads:

In the Navy records in Washington, there is an obscure entry reading "Saddles for Gobi." This film is based on the story behind that entry, one of the strangest stories of World War II.

The Navy created a meteorology command in order to provide accurate forecasts for operations in the Pacific War. Lt. Cmdr. Wyatt and CPO Sam McHale are detailed to the most remote station in the Gobi Desert deep inside Inner Mongolia. For McHale, who is fresh off a cruise on "The Big E" and itching to get back on the water, the desert is the last place he wants to be.

One evening, Mongolian nomads led by Kengtu set up camp at the station's oasis. Despite cultural differences, the two groups settle into an uneasy co-existence. Seaman Jenkins, an ex-cowboy, muses that the Mongols would make an excellent cavalry troop. Hoping to persuade the Mongols to join them against the Japanese, McHale requisitions 60 Army-issue saddles. They soon arrive and the Mongols appear delighted. Later, however, Japanese planes bomb and strafe the combined oasis camp, killing Wyatt and several Mongols. When the Mongols abandon the camp, the Americans, now alone and defenseless, begin to evacuate 800 miles east across the Gobi to the sea.

McHale and the men reach an oasis where Chinese traders are camped. There, they encounter Kengtu, who explains he abandoned the station to protect his people from the Japanese "birds in the sky". In return for his followers keeping their saddles, Kengtu offers to escort the Americans to the sea if they disguise themselves in Mongol dress. All goes well until they reach the Japanese-occupied city of Sangchien, China, where Kengtu leads McHale's unit into a trap where they are captured by Japanese soldiers, who transport them to a prisoner-of-war camp on China's coast. There, the officer in charge decides that because they are not in uniform, they will be treated as spies.

However, one of Kengtu's men, Wali-Akhun, allows himself to be arrested while wearing a stolen American uniform. Wali reveals to McHale and his men that Kengtu has arranged for their escape and gives them wire-cutters he smuggled in. That night, they break out and head for the docks, where Kengtu is waiting with a Chinese junk. The wily Kengtu explains to McHale that their capture was a ploy to get the Japanese to transport them to the ocean. They set sail for Okinawa and are later spotted by U.S. Navy patrol planes and rescued. McHale is awarded the Navy Cross, and Kengtu and Wali are flown in an admiral's transport plane to re-join their people. There, McHale and his men present the Mongols with 60 brand-new, navy blue saddle blankets emblazoned with the logo: "The First U.S. Navy Mongolian Calvary".

Cast

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Production

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The film is loosely based on actual events. The weather station in the Gobi was considered the "crown jewel" in the operation because it was in "meteorologically uncharted territory".[5] Instead of the air strike by the Japanese depicted in the film, there was a skirmish 25 miles from the camp which helped to scare off the enemy. The story was dramatized by Edmund G. Love and published in Collier's September 6, 1952 issue.[6]

Though most of the actors playing natives were American, some actual Mongolian phrases made their way into the film.[7]

Gary Merrill, Richard Basehart, David Wayne, and William Lundigan were the actors that producers originally had in mind when the film was announced.[8] The film was Robert Wise's first in color.[9]

References

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  1. ^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989; ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1. p. 248
  2. ^ "The Top Box Office Hits of 1953", Variety, January 13, 1954
  3. ^ "SP:WaW Depot™ :: View topic - SACO - U.S. Navy in China WWII". Spwaw.com. Retrieved 2016-12-21.[permanent dead link]
  4. ^ "Ernest Borgnine on the genesis of McHale's Navy". YouTube.
  5. ^ Kush, Linda. The Rice Paddy Navy: U.S. Sailors Undercover in China: espionage and sabotage behind Japanese lines during World War II. Osprey, 2012. 206.
  6. ^ Weirather, Larry. Fred Barton and the Warlords' Horses of China: How an American Cowboy Brought the Old West to the Far East. McFarland, 2015. 154.
  7. ^ The Mongolia Society Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2 (7) (Fall, 1964), p. 73.
  8. ^ Pryor, Thomas M. "FOX PLANS PICTURE ON WEATHER GROUP; Navy Meteorologists in Gobi Desert Figure in '90 Saddles From Kengtu' at Studio," New York Times. January 15, 1952.
  9. ^ "Destination Gobi", AFI Catalog of Feature Films, The First 100 Years 1893–1993.
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